Factorio Forums

Having seen the previews for recyclers and quality bonuses, I'm wondering if it would be possible to break the game with a combination of productivity modules and recyclers.
The quality preview said that the Space Age quality bonuses could apply to productivity modules, which would mean even more free products for the same materials.
If you build up productivity bonuses and then send part of their production to be recycled (using splitters, filter inserters etc), could the recyclers end up producing more raw materials than you need to produce the stuff you recycle?
I haven't seen if anyone has already brought up this idea. But it could trivialize the resource management side of the game, if you could reach a point where you don't need to mine any raw materials or even produce intermediate products, because you get all your input by recycling the "free" output from productivity.

If I remember correctly
Max productivity capped at 300% ( moddable )
Recyclers gives 25% of the items

2.0 is the next major release version and does not include Quality or the Recycler, those are part of the expansion.

- Edited the post and topic to mention the expansion instead of the 2.0 version.
- I'm not sure this system would be impossible even if 300% productivity is a maximum, because productivity bonuses are compounded when you apply them to each intermediate product as well as a "final" product. This depends on how recycling will work. If it only returns the intermediate products that are directly used to make the recycled item (example - green circuits from recycling modules), then this limits how much you can get for free by recycling the productivity "extras".
If recycling returns the most basic raw materials (example - recycling modules returning the copper and iron that made the green circuits) and those are then fed through a production chain in which every step has some productivity bonus, this could still lead to an unlimited resources situation.

Honestly, I wouldn't worry about it. It's not even out yet, and the devs are aware of potential exploits using productivity and recycling. They'll make it work without issues.

These things that you are theorize about are already explained in the FFF 375
https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-375

There's a prod cap

And theres a 25% resource drop chance with the recycler.

I think this will add up to 65-70% of the resources being available.

Mad Inventor wrote: ↑Thu Aug 22, 2024 6:22 pm If you build up productivity bonuses and then send part of their production to be recycled (using splitters, filter inserters etc), could the recyclers end up producing more raw materials than you need to produce the stuff you recycle?

Why would you want to if, among basic resources, you already have infinite oil, water and, technically, in v1.1 and infinite iron&copper in v2.0+DLC?
I believe at least space biome also offers infinite stones.
You shouldn't ever have necessity in abusing productivity + recycler combo.
Not unless you'll really need it for making something self-replicating (read: ammo) in some real tight space (read: space platform). If import will be nerfed to make this strategy kinda valid, of course :3
Unless you're into infinite wood (and in case if, somehow, Gleba won't provide some means for getting infinite wood)...
Uranium variants are a problem though.

The other way devs balance these things is by overages. So if your module build is going to use say 3x copper than everything else, even if can go "break" even on a negative feedback loop you then have to carefully balance how many resources you're producing. Otherwise, the resources will back up into a machine and jam part of your factory. Dealing with this is typically the source of existential horror in mods that feature infinite resource sources; like Space Exploration and Nullius. Since those predate Space Age, and Space Exploration is Earandel's baby - Wube has someone on staff who gave me seven good reasons to use normal mining.